David Miliband asks Syria to help stabilise Middle East

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has urged Syria to help bring stability to the Middle East during a visit to the country.

By Tim Butcher, Middle East Correspondent

6:01PM GMT 18 Nov 2008

Making the highest level British visit to Damascus in seven years, Mr Miliband said he believed that his host President Bashar al-Assad could play a "constructive role" in the region as the two men sought to build on a delicate rapprochement between Syria and the West.

Mr Miliband expressed hope that Mr Assad would continue indirect peace talks with Israel, which have been brokered in recent months by Turkey.

"This is a region of great conflict but also of great history," said Mr Miliband.

"It is important that those with power in the region exercise it with great responsibility."

He added that he was confident that Syria can "play a constructive role" in bringing peace to the Middle East region.

While his hosts also described the talks as constructive, Mr Miliband left Damascus empty-handed, with no clear undertaking from Syria about cutting links with militant groups such as Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon.

Britain hopes that it can eventually persuade Damascus to sever those links, thereby bringing peace closer. Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, reiterated how important that would be to his country when he made clear that it would only agree a peace treaty with Syria if it cuts all militant links.

The Bush administration had long taken the view that Syria is a rogue state intrinsically linked to Iran and its proxy force Hizbollah and would not countenance any co-operation. When Britain sent a high-ranking Foreign Office diplomat, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Damascus two years ago to probe potentially closer links it was severely criticised by President George W Bush's administration.

But America's position has softened over the last year and efforts towards peace are expected to be given fresh impetus once President-Elect Barack Obama enters office in January.

Syria has also woken up to the threat posed by al-Qaeda following a series of attacks inside its borders. It had long been accused by the US of turning a blind eye to Sunni fighters using Syria as a transit point for entering Iraq.

Mr Assad remains under the spotlight of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations, which discovered traces of enriched uranium at a site suspected of being an illegal nuclear facility in northern Syria.

What went on at the site, which was destroyed in a covert Israeli airstrike last year, remains shrouded in mystery with Syria now accusing the Israeli air force of being responsible for the uranium traces.

Indirect talks between Israel and Syria - technically still at war - centre on whether Israel is prepared to give back the Golan Heights. The land was seized by Israeli troops in the 1967 war and defended fiercely ever since.

Mr Peres said that as long as Syria allows Iran to send supplies and weapons to Hizbollah, the Shia militant group which is strong in southern Lebanon, no peace deal is possible.

"If Syria will understand that they can't have the Golan Heights and keep Lebanon as a base for the Iranians, then the decision will be clear," he said.

"But if she wants the Golan Heights back and keeps her bases in Lebanon - which are really controlled and financed by the Iranians - no Israeli will agree to have Iranians on our borders."